Sri Guru Puja 2002 - Srila Bhakti Vaibhava Puri Maharaja

formless or form) is idolatrous, but he that worships the spirit in wise love
(however near he may be to an idol of form or of no form) is a worshipper
of Sprit. But we go further to tolerate all these classes if they be sincere.
God accepts the worship of all those who worship their highest ideal,
whether it is form, formless or Spirit, and it is under some regular
processes that the idea of God becomes purer and purer in every soul and
not by fits and starts. That man has no heart for his brother and
consequently for God also, who sneer at the highest ideal of another
behind him, is idolatrous. A war against the idol worshippers either in
words or action is not a crusade but a fit of rash, loveless and ambitious
fanaticism of a very unphilanthropic character. We therefore, with all our
due attempts at the spiritual reformation of our erring brothers, tolerate all
classes of idolatry from the worshippers of formlessness to the
worshippers of man, or matter as God. We are opposed to the atheists
alone who live and enjoy for themselves. Those who are anxious for the
blessing of God are our brothers in faith, whatever error there may be in
their ideas and forms of worship. Love of God, however misdirected it may
be, does by force of its own natural strength, rise higher and higher in the
scale of spiritual progress. Its want is the degradation of the soul alone.
Those who do not love God have an opposite course from us and are
objects of pity with all classes of theists. God save them.
We were led to these remarks by a desire to show that we are candid
examiners of the institution of Jagannatha without that hatred to the
idolatrous (who are not prepared to understand the philosophy of
Purushottam Tattva) which is perceivable in the short sighted and rash
reformers of our country.
The system of Jagannatha is viewed in two different ways. The
superstitious and the ignorant take it as a system of idolatry by
worshipping the idols in the temple as God Almighty appearing in the
shape of a carved wood for the salvation of the Urias. But the Saragrahi
Vaishnavas find the idols as emblems of some eternal truth which has
been explained in the Vedanta Sutras of Vyasa. Within the temples in
which are to be found the idols of Bimala, Shiva, Ganesha and Surya, the
big, towering temple of Jagannatha stands in the middle of the compound.
Those who examined the system of Hindu Theology with a philosophic eye,
are well aware that there are five different forms of faith comprised
therein. The first form of faith is Shaktaism or the worship of nature as
God. The second is the worship of Surya or the sun which is identified with
heat; the only active element in lifeless matter. The third teaches one to
worship the Spirit in its most unsatisfactory form of development in the
lower animals. In this form, the elephant-man or Ganesha is the object of
worship. Man is the object of worship in fourth stage of Hinduism. The
soul, well developed as it is in the man, is worshipped in Shiva in whom
the human souls is said to be observed after salvation. In the fifth stage
alone, the Infinite God distinct from the human soul, is perceived and
worshipped. Here commences Vaishnavism. In these five stage are shown
the whole history of Hindu Theology, nay, the whole history of Theology in
general. All sorts of creeds that have come to existence since the creation
of man, are included in these five stages. Name any system of faith that